


Keep Your Eyes on Me

by ahhhnorealnamesallowed



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Artistic Harry, Canon-Typical Violence, Drawing, HP: EWE, Harry-centric, M/M, Moving Tattoo(s), Not Epilogue Compliant, Tattoos, all the romance is super low-key btw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 07:27:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9982829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahhhnorealnamesallowed/pseuds/ahhhnorealnamesallowed
Summary: Harry has always craved an escape. It started when he was hiding in the library from Dudley and his gang, and he discovered comic books. From there, he developed an interest, which turned into a passion, and eventually an obsession.This is the story of how Harry Potter became a tattoo artist (and fell in love with Draco Malfoy along the way).





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wrote this as a Drarry fic to myself for (and on) my birthday. It was one of those hour-plus writing sprees that ended with four pages of what I was certain was crap. So I didn't actually read it until yesterday...  
> It wasn't as bad as I feared, and with some minor tweaks I think it's good to go!  
> This is my first Drarry fic, so let me know if the characterisation is iffy at all!

Harry has always loved to draw.  Okay, that’s not quite true—Harry has always loved to escape.  Hiding in the school library from Dudley and his gang, reading fantasy novels that weren’t allowed in the house because magic, imagination, anything even remotely “unnatural” or “not normal” were expressly prohibited and seen as dangerous by his relatives, eventually became enjoyable to Harry; it offered him access to a different world.  When he found the superhero comic books and the worlds of men and monsters, heroes and villains, good and evil, he learned to love drawing.

At first he imitated, or tried to imitate, the styles of his favourite comic books, drawing and redrawing superheroes on any scrap of paper he could find, until his pencils were numbs and his pens were out of ink.  Then, he found the collections of art books, full-coloured replicas of the great works of classical and renaissance and modern artists, and learned that comic book superheroes were only one small portion of what could be done with ink on paper.

Harry devoured the works on art history the same way he devoured the stories of hobbits and pirates, his appetite for escape voracious.  He learned techniques and terms, practicing and doodling and drawing whenever he could—between classes, late at night, whenever he had a free moment to sit somewhere far from the little house on Privet Drive, away from Dudley and Vernon and chores and housework.  He could reimagine the world around him, capture it on paper, in ink, in lines and details and relief—and he would be someone different in this paper world, someone outside his hunger and bruises and baggy clothes and no parents.

Then, eventually, shocking and wonderful, came that faithful birthday—eleven years old, and a WIZARD!  Once at Hogwarts, Harry had no need to escape, no reason to wish himself away from the real world.  Well, he had some reasons, but he never felt the same urge, the same need to draw this world, to capture it and change it—the magic, he felt, wouldn’t translate into lines and shadows the same way as the Muggle world, and so he never tried.  He would doodle during class, but they would be quick and sketchy and childish and imprecise—quills and ink and parchment were not his mediums and it showed.

But come summer, Harry would return to Privet Drive and Dudley and chores and no food and drawing.  He would spend the first few weeks of every summer holiday drawing—refreshing his skills, re-familiarizing himself with the textures of papers and pens and pencils, drawing and re-drawing the world around him in the smallest bedroom or in the library or the fields and parks, until he was back to the level he was at before he left for school.  Then he would hunt for new books in the library or reread his favourites, and learn new tricks and techniques and skills and styles, which he would practice and practice and practice until summer ended.  At least, that was his plan for each summer.  But usually, it didn’t work out that way.

It was during the summer following his fourth year at Hogwarts that magic started to bleed into Harry’s art.  The nightmares that kept him awake or screaming also found their way into his landscapes of Little Whining, images of darkness and masked figures and Voldemort and Cedric and gravestones and cauldrons and blackness and blood swirling through the fields and parks and cul-de-sacs.  Then came the dementor attack and the trial—and Harry was locked up in his room, drawing for hours and days and not sleeping and hardly eating, trying to get the images out of his head, to escape from this new reality, more terrifying than anything he had ever even imagined.

It was during his fifth year that Harry began to draw at school.  He learned the strokes and pressures needed to commit the castle to parchment, the angles and strokes of quill, the weight of inks and parchments.  He learned to prepare his own inks, to create blends of different pigmentation and different textures.  He learned about different parchments, different quills, different charms to animate images.  He studied different styles and techniques and periods of wizarding art.  He learned about portrait making, and the magical processes involved, and how portraits interact with each other, and why.  But even as he learned more about oil and canvas, he stuck with parchment and quill and black ink.

In fifth year, all Harry’s drawings were in shades of black, from the dark greys of thunderstorm clouds to the deepest black of moonless midnights.  There was no light that year, no colour—not even the burnt russet of dried blood or the shocking vibrancy of fresh blood.  Despite the lack of colour, there was no lack of experimentation—Harry tried to capture the magic around him in quill-strokes and charm work, bringing sections of the castle alive on his parchment, capturing the movements of the stars above the astronomy tower, the clouds shifting over the Quidditch pitch, the tentacles of the Giant Squid waving from the depths of the Black Lake.

It was in this year that Harry learned about Blood Quills, and was reminded again of Quick-Quotes Quills, and he swore to never use either, and even now he doesn’t know which is actually worse.

It was in sixth year, after the Department of Mysteries, after the broken nose and potions book, when Harry began to use coloured inks.  The blacks were darker this year, the greys lighter, but the colours vibrant.  Flashes of greens like the killing curse, the morsmordre, his mother’s eyes; reds the colours of blood—fresh, watery, drying, old—and flecks of silver like the patronous, like a set of weary eyes in a gaunt face, like the ghosts of the castle.  Harry began to draw people: the professors, the ghosts, the students in the Gryffindor common room or the library or the Great Hall.  Piles upon piles upon piles of portraits of Draco Malfoy growing progressively gaunter and more frightened and more harried as he exits the Room of Requirement.  Piles upon piles upon piles upon _piles_ of portraits of Draco Malfoy as he bleeds out on the bathroom floor, blood pooling around him, tears drying on his cheeks, fire bright in his silver eyes.  These sketches, studies of Draco Malfoy in ink on parchment, never move—Harry avoids charming them; he draws them and quickly hides them, burying them in a box under his bed where his dorm-mates think he hides his porn.

Harry stops drawing after the Astronomy Tower and the funeral and the Goodbyes and the parties.  He reads books in the tent with Hermione, after Ron leaves.  He tries to think, tries to piece everything together, tries to search for clues, tries to stop himself from looking through that book filled with hundreds of copies of Draco Malfoy’s face and eyes and blood, which he somehow managed to keep on his person through all the different flights and fights and trials.  But then there was Christmas at Godric’s Hollow and the nightmares are worse and Harry starts to draw again.  He draws Dumbledore in his youth, the smiling face of Grindewald, the body of Bathilda as it crumples to the floor, the face of Draco Malfoy as he is forced to torture or be tortured.  There is no colour in these images, and no charms to bring them to life—Harry doesn’t want them alive, he wants them out of him, wants to escape the pressure they create in his head, in his chest.

But then Ron comes back and there is no reason to draw anymore, no time to draw anymore—there is planning to do, and Horcruxes to find and destroy.  And things get better once the locket is gone, and the nightmares are less and it seems like they have a real chance at succeeding.  Until, suddenly, they don’t.  There are snatchers, and Malfoy Manor, and torture and _Mudblood_ and Draco Malfoy beneath him, scared, and Draco Malfoy not telling his father, his aunt, and there are knives and chandeliers and the sea and Dobby—Harry spends the days waiting for the goblin to recover, planning and working and preparing.  But the nights are spent drawing.

It is during his time at Shell Cottage that Harry runs out of parchment and begins to draw on himself.  The images swirl across his skin, bend in the creases of his arms, twist across the panes of his stomach.  It is difficult to draw on skin, to find the pressure that will transfer the ink from the quill without hurting him or cutting into him.  And the angles are awkward, and the images change with his movements, with his breath.  But the ink washes off with his sweat, when he bathes, and it isn’t permanent.  Sometimes he wishes it was.

Harry stops drawing again after they leave Shell Cottage.  There is no more time—everything is coming to a head to quickly and he can hardly keep up, let alone capture it on his arms or on the bits of parchment he was able to scrounge up before leaving the Cottage.  Before he is completely ready, they are at Hogwarts and he no longer wanted to draw.  He can’t imagine attempting to capture the faces of children before they go to war; it is not a record that should be made, and as much as he wants to escape that reality, putting it on parchment would prove that it had existed; putting it on his body would kill him.

Then there is fire, heat all around him, stalking him, hunting him—but it is the warmth he feels, the warmth of Draco Malfoy, alive, attempting to save him again, that he focuses on.  That he would draw, if he had the time: the look of wonder in Malfoy’s eyes as Harry had reached down to pull him onto the broom; that he would paint on his skin, save in oil and ink over his heart.

There is death, everywhere, and curses and blood and children.  Harry wants to capture the colours and sounds of the curses, simply so that they cannot hurt anyone else; he wants to lock them in parchment and ink and save everyone.

The forest is eerie and cold, despite the warmth of May.  The shadows and shades, the sharp lines and sharp reliefs, the soft forms of his family around him, would look striking in ink, or watercolour, even though he has never used it.

The green is a different kind of brightness in the darkness than the gleaming bright whiteness of the station.  The angles and shapes of the station would be interesting to draw, all straight lines and Muggle architecture fading into immaterial and ether.  To capture the curse would be tedium, having drawn it thousands of time, from memory and nightmare, having seen it hundreds of times from every angle.  Even the colour is only vivid due to the surrounding darkness—it has lost its lustre through over-use and repetition.

Harry would have captured Neville’s face as he swung the Sword, the fierce determination in his eyes, in a heartbeat.  That image should be copied and framed, turned into stamps and stationary, hung above the fireplace in his Nan’s sitting room, or framed on the bedside table in his parents’ room in St Mungo’s.

The dancing light as Bellatrix fell, the look and laughter on her face, so much like that of Sirius, burned itself into Harry’s mind, but he swore to never draw it—drawing her death would be a betrayal, and a mockery.  Even if it haunts him, even if he wishes to escape it, he will never draw her dying.

It is not Voldemort he remembers in the Great Hall, after everything has ended; it is the Malfoys.  Without hesitation he draws them, achingly awkward and so grateful to have survived, to be together.  He draws the Weasleys as they mourn Fred, draws the still faces of Tonks and Remus through his tears, sketches the scenes of life and death that litter the Great Hall in the aftermath, the little tableaux each family creates.

As the Death Eater trials begin, Harry begins studying tattoos, both the magical and Muggle, the powerful and mundane.  He learns about Dark Marks from Death Eaters and historians, theorists and survivors.  He learns about magical tattoos that shift beneath the skin, as little or as much as they want.  He learns about Muggle methodology, of needles and ink; he learns about charms and spells that do just as well.  He learns how to combine his quill and parchment and pen and paper and needles and charms to make something unique and his own.

His first tattoo, the first one he gets, the first one he gives, is one and the same.  The pain is more than the scraping of quill on flesh, less than the drawn out pain of a Blood Quill, less by far than the _cruciatus_ or anything else he has suffered.  It is a small golden snitch on the inside of his wrist that flutters up and down his forearm and darts around his wrist, trailing stars and moons behind it.  His experience of drawing on himself allows him to capture it, display it, present it, as he wanted to.  The charms used to create its tail of stars, and to bring it to life, had tickled.

The second tattoo he gave was to George, about a month after the war.  Then, matching ones for Ron and Hermione; an entire mural on Luna’s back; a sleeve for Dean, and one for Seamus; one of Lavender’s shoulder blades; and Charlie, and Bill, and eventually there were enough people interested to warrant opening a small shop and studio in Diagon Alley.

After the Death Eater trials, where he had spoken for and against various Death Eaters, where he had testified for Draco and Narcissa Malfoy, where he had testified against Snatchers and Ministry Officials, and Dolores Umbridge and Crabbes and Goyles and Notts and Lestranges; where he had talked and talked and _talked_ without end in defence of students in his year and the year above and the years below, in defence of Pansy Parkinson and Theodore Nott and Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle and Stan Shunpike, where he spoken about his own use of the Unforgiveables and laws he broke and the people he hurt and the lives he ruined or ended or saved.  When it was all over, he went to Malfoy Manor for tea with Narcissa Malfoy and to return the wand he took from Draco Malfoy and to mention Andromeda and Teddy and where Draco Malfoy asked him how much it would cost for Harry to turn his Dark Mark into something else, _anything_ else.

And Harry was back into research, around appointments and applications for spots, and he had to figure out if he could ink over the Mark or if he had to work around, and how the charms and the needles and the inks and images would react with the latent magic left from Voldemort, despite his death.  And he had to imagine what he would paint on Malfoy’s body, what he would cover him with, what traces of his own he would leave besides bruises and bloodstains and scars.  But with his snitch and with his stars and with Malfoy’s silver eyes and pale skin and scars and bruises and pale, shining hair, Harry knew he could find something perfect.

And while he thought and planned and worked and drew and tattooed himself and others, and researched and sketched, and went to Hogwarts to capture the destruction left behind and help with the rebuilding, there were still teas with Narcissa at the Manor, and with Andromeda in her flat, and lunches at the Burrow, and Grimmauld Place to clean and order and make liveable.  By the time he had moved into Grimmauld Place completely, and Narcissa and Andromeda were having tea there, together, with Teddy, and Draco Malfoy was finished with his house arrest, and was coming to tea, too, and Ginny and Dean and Seamus were all together, Harry knew what he wanted to give Draco.

Between sessions of sketching and discussions and kissing and drinking, Harry managed to convince Draco that he could change the shape of the Mark, use charms and ink, and turn if from the snake and skull into a flower and forever.  The snake filled in, wrapping into infinity; the skull replaced with a Zinnia in full bloom—the remembrance of absent friends, forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Zinnia [meaning](http://www.almanac.com/content/flower-meanings-language-flowers) and [image](http://www.almanac.com/plant/zinnias) from the Farmer's Almanac.  
> Thanks for reading!  
> I'm not entirely positive I'm happy with the ending, so any and all feedback, concrit, or general thoughts would be greatly and deeply appreciated.


End file.
